L00P
by NeueHaasGrotesk
Summary: Things are finally settling down. Douglas had moved into a new house recently, and things are actually looking good for once ever since their Captain for MJN had gone missing. Now, if only his TV would stop malfunctioning... In fact, nothing ever seems to be able to fix it.


Two televisions sets, ten service calls and a few complaints to the TV service provider later, the situation remains just as it is.

Not that it really matters, actually. It was just a little blip in his life that he would have liked to be rid off, but one that did not affect him too greatly in any particular way. After all, life was going smoothly and well enough for him to overlook it. He was kept busy often nowadays, and the TV was rarely, if ever, switched on.

He had moved house recently, after things had settled down. Well, mostly MJN business, actually. After the Captain had gone missing for long enough, they had gotten someone else in to do the job. It was strange operating without the familiar figure around the plane and in the cockpit, but they got used to it, eventually. MJN has to, if MJN wants to survive, and Carolyn made herself particularly clear on that. Police reports were made, and missing person notices put up, but no one ever found him, as though he had vanished into thin air one fine day. It was a month, and then two, and by the time half a year had gone they had settled in with his replacement, and only kept half an eye out for his news.

The new neighbourhood was nice. He hadn't gotten around to get to know his neighbours yet, but he will one day. His working schedule hadn't been easy on him, and he also isn't as young as he once was as well. He spends most of free time not at work catching up on well-deserved rest, and occasionally cooking. Now and then, he sits and watches TV when it is late at night, and he can't sleep due to jet lag, and merely allows the wash of meaningless sounds and moving pictures flash before him in the dark living room.

And that really is the problem, you see.

It had come to his attention that his TV would only broadcast a single channel for an hour every night. He had thought that perhaps it was some strange commercial, or one of those late night programs that don't make sense, but when all of the other channels were playing the same program, he had a problem. It wasn't that he really minded it much, but he didn't like having to watch the same thing over and over again every night at that hour when he was home. It wasn't a listed program, and he was assured that he didn't have a faulty television set, and neither was it the service provider's fault. It was simply there, for every night that he sat before the TV before he went to sleep, or stayed up after a flight back in at the wee hours of morning. Recently, he realized that it was a looping sequence.

It wasn't even remotely interesting, even. It was just about a boy waking up in a room with only a window, whom after exploring and crawling out of the window just to find himself falling right back into the same room that he had crawled out of, decide to try to live in it on his own. The room is eccentric and alive, in a way. The boy drinks from the tap, and survives on the canned food that seems to have gone through quite a bit of unintended GM engineering in its prior life from the way it mutates. The cartoonish boy attempts escape, more than once, and seems to seek help from the audience, but there is no sound – the program is mute even as his lips move. He makes a weak attempt to make a companion for himself out of the things that he salvages around the room, one that only very crudely resembles a human being if you look at it sideways, and which will come alive during the boy's last attempt at escape, and devour him alive, at which the screen will turn black only to have the lights flicker on with the boy waking up in the same room again.

It was all quite a bit of morbid business for a cartoon, and probably the reason why it was always played this late in the night. He never really minds, allowing it to play on the background while his mind mulls on the other issues of life, and occasionally playing some classical music to accompany it. Other time he falls asleep with it on, and wakes up to the morning news informing him of today's weather and the week's forecast.

Things have been good recently. Carolyn and Herc would be tying the knot, soon. It was a rather long and toothy business for the both of them, but he was glad that they both got down to it eventually. Arthur was still on the quest of searching for a giant toblerone to gift them, and wasn't giving up any time soon. He was getting to be good friends with the new First Officer, too. Term loosely applied, of course. His daughter's eighteenth birthday was also coming up, and he would have to think up of a gift for her, soon.

Lately he's also stopped trying to fix his TV. It really isn't that much of a problem, really.

Besides, the boy in it rather looks like good old Captain Crieff, what with the freckles and red curls from what he can see on the screen.

Now and then, Douglas wonders where Martin has disappeared to, and hopes that it is to a better life that he had gone to. Perhaps a better job. A better place than the cold and deserted student hostel.

On screen the boy is devoured alive again.


End file.
